| The Outline
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| If someone asked you to explain clearly and simply what Christianity is all about, could you do it? Where would you start - and what would you include? There are
many things you could say and it is helpful to have a simple frame work to organise your thoughts. The following outline was produced by Canon Jim Glennon of Sydney, Australia, and is explained in his book "Know and Tell The Gospel".
A good outline needs to be simple to remember, free of jargon, cover the central issues of the Gospel and be easy to remember. This model is based on the five headings: |
| God |
| Man |
| God |
| What if I do? |
| What if I don't? |
| God |
God really exists. He made the world and that includes you and me. We believe this because he has clearly revealed himself in the historic person of Jesus Christ
whom he raised from the dead. Jesus is the rightful ruler of this world. See Genesis 1:1, Matthew 28:18 and Phil 2:9-11.
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| Man |
| None of us has lived as though the above was true. We have all assumed that we have the right to run our own lives. Sometimes we have consciously disobeyed God; at other times we have just ignored him.
It amounts to the same thing: rebellion. See Mark 7: 21-23, Romans 3: 12, 1 John: 3,4. |
| God |
| God tells us, through Jesus, that this is not our world to live in according to our selfish desires. It is God's world. We should therefore stop rebelling against him and live in the world the way
he has designed us to live in it. He calls us to come into his "Kingdom"; that is, to submit to his kingly rule in our lives.
See Matthew 7:21, Mark 1: 14,15, Acts 17: 30.
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| What If I Do? |
| If we stop rebelling and bring our lives under God's rule, he treats us as though we had never rebelled against him.
He accepts us wholeheartedly, because Jesus, in dying on the cross, took upon himself the punishment we deserve. A whole new relationship with God then opens up.
We become his friends and are adopted into his family. See John 3: 16, Romans 6: 23, 8: 1,15, Colossians 2: 14. |
| What If I Don't? |
| If we refuse God's offer of forgiveness and reconciliation, we will remain unforgiven and unreconciled. Ultimately, rebels will be overthrown.
See Matthew 7: 23, 26, 27, Romans 1: 18 and 2 Thessalonians 1: 8,9. |